What I probably hate most about the internet is the language barrier that cut our communities into pieces. When I finished a little rom editor of an old Genesis game, it occurred to me that it was possible that a Japanese version of myself (who we'll call BryanJ from here on out) could have already done it, and I'd never know. Remaking the wheel like a sap.

MagicCards has scans of foreign cards... but it is far, far from complete. Far too ad-hoc, completely useless.

But in theory it could be a low-desired, low-effort feature if the resources were ever there. The rules enforcement would in theory make it simple to play with someone who speaks a different language, something a bit difficult to do with Cockatrice.

BryanM wrote:But in theory it could be a low-desired, low-effort feature if the resources were ever there. The rules enforcement would in theory make it simple to play with someone who speaks a different language, something a bit difficult to do with Cockatrice.

Adding the possibility of localizations has been brought up on multiple occasions. Adding it just to displayed cards won't be a problem after I finish the new Rendering Modules. The problem is that MAGE interacts with the user (target selection and effect texts just to name a few) and all this needs to be extracted from the code and externalized somehow. This is a large effort, anyway you want to tackle this. For reference, you can look at how much is externalized in MTGO. There are card names, types, subtypes and effect texts. Add to this all the messages from the custom effects.

Although I don't have such a high interest in having it in other languages (even though I'm not a native English speaker), technically it presents interest. I would like to bring this option to MAGE. As far as I'm concerned, there are other things that are more important at the moment. And I know that the more we delay this, the more work will need to be done later. Unfortunately, there is so much free time we have and it's not nearly enough to do everything we wish for.

The first question I think should be how much information should the ai have about the players deck.

Should it know the exact contents or simply the type of game e.g. standard or shd it have a list of "top decks" which it guesses the player is playing based on the land and cards played so far?

Not sure it can be simply implemented. You need some sort of metadata for it. Something global. And it should be constantly updated or better auto-updated. Really complicated stuff, there are lots of other AI areas to improve.

The three simple options are assume the deck can contain any card in the game, any card in standard, or simply use the opponents deck file. Now you have a position to be able to move the game state forward and calculate the options. It is pretty impossible to have the ai make a decision when it is totally unknown what the opponent is capable of.

It's arguable. First of all, metagame differs a lot depending on format. Secondly, it changes whenever new set comes out. Also, just imagine a draft where you have no idea what player plays with during the first game. I doubt that you won't play 2nd or 3rd creature in draft because of player playing white and the possibility that he picked Day of Judgment. It will make AI paranoic.

Finally, AI shouldn't win in most cases, it should be competetive and bring pleasure and that usually means that AI should be finally beated.

And to tell the truth, having no knowledge about metagame is not the problem, there are lots of other areas to improve, and projects like Magarena proved that.

At best, the only metagameish game it should consider is "hey, he's playing a lot of white. I'll pull a Deathmark out of my sideboard.." inbetween matches. And that even feels silly to work on when it can't even evaluate the boardstate, recognize it's not going to win a race, and begin to chump block.

It's really easy to ask for the moon and the stars ("Segregate deck construction method from game type, I want Sealed Commander damnit! And two-headed giant draft! And backdraft! And leaguuues! And make it possible to adjust the timer on Limited deck construction. And single elimination tournaments. And give me a pony. Two ponies. So I can feed one of them to the other one. Ponies get hungry.") but isn't too useful, is it?

Personally, all I really want in the reasonable term:

* AI that can play the game. At least to the degree that it understands basic card value and the battlefield state; ie, not dumb enough to waste Bolts on low value creatures or your face at max life.

* A few more expert sets at 100%; New Mirrodin / Innistrad just don't appeal to me that much, though I have hope for New Ravnica. (Reminds me, is the booster generator for Dark Ascension fixed?)

* Maybe make the End Turn button work after you're done declaring your attackers.

When applying 1366x768 resolution on my laptop, the zoomed card cannot be displayed fully (the lower part of it is missing). Would it be possible to enlarge the zoomed card zone vertically since the lower part of the right-most tab was not occupied anyway?